Rapture Fever

36 RAPTURE FEVER
God’s cannon fodder in the inevitable war of Armageddon. Without
the Jews’ service as future sitting ducks, pre-tribulational dispensationalists
would lose all faith in the imminent Rapture.
The Antichrist would have no ducks in a barrel if there were no
barrel. The State of Israel h the Antichtit’s barrel. The leaders of
dispensationalism do not say in public that this is what their
support for Israel is all about, but it is. 24
Based on Zechariah
13:8-9, among other passages, dispensationalists conclude that
two-thirds of the Jews are doomed. This is standard teaching
fi-om the dispensational pulpits.25
Dispensational fundamentalism’s support for the State of
Israel is governed by this unique presupposition: “No national
Israel, no Armageddon; no Armageddon, no imminent Rapture.”
This is three-stage aPocal@ticism: the Rapture of the
Church (cosmic discontinuity), followed by the holocaust of
Israel’sJews (historical discontinuity), followed by the return of
Christ to set up His millennial kingdom seven years after the
Rapture (cosmic and historical discontinuity). The Church’s
work in history has nothing to do with any of this.
One piece of evidence for my contention is the almost total
absence of evangelism by dispensational groups in or to the
State of Israel. They do not beam Christian broadcasts in from
[1962] 1988), p. 108.
24. In their essay for a conservative secular magazine, dispensationalists Ed
Dobson and Ed Hindson try to sugar-coat this concern for national Israel. They
admit that “The Tribulauon will largely consist of the Antichrist persecuting the Jews
and the nation of Israel.” They quote Dallas Seminary’s J. Dwight Pentecost “God’s
purpose for Israel in this Tribulation is to bring about the conversion of a multitude
of Jews, who will enter into the blessings of the kingdom and experience the fulfillment
of Israel’s covenants.” What they do not discuss is that according to pre-tribulational
dispensationalism, this conversion of the Jews only takes place in the midst of
the slaughter of two-thirds of the entire population of the State of Israel. Dobson and
Hindson, “Apocalypse Now?” Policy Reuiezo (Fall 1986), pp. 20-21.
25. Grace Halsell, a non-Christian who went on two of Jerry Falwell’s tours to
the State of Israel, got into a discussion with one young man on the tour who assured
her that two-thirds of all Jews would be killed during the battle of Armageddon:
Grace Halsell, prophecy and Politics: Milttunt Evangelist on the Road to Nuclear War
(WestporL Connecticut Lawrence Hill& Co., 1986), p. 26.